“Here lies David T. Young… Dave tried to tell us the truth. We didn’t want to hear it.”
This is what I have told many p
eople over the past three decades what I wanted carved on my tombstone. Yet I don’t plan to have a tombstone, I plan to be cremated.
George Orwell once wrote that in a totalitarian society telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Indeed, it’s pretty dangerous — it can get you fired from your job, it can get you arrested (ask Chelsea Manning), it can make you unpopular and lose friends, and it can cause you to be marginalized.
I pondered this after speaking with a friend about the Super Bowl and its Most Valuable Player, the great quarterback Tom Brady. My friend has been a huge fan of Brady for many years, mostly because he played his college football at the University of Michigan and he has been a first-class example of leadership and success.
But I upset my friend when I told him Brady is a big fan of Donald Trump. My friend asked for evidence and I told him about Bill Maher’s “Real Time” HBO broadcast last Friday night.
Maher said he was rooting for the Atlanta Falcons because the New England Patriots owner, head coach and Brady publicly have expressed their liking of Trump. Maher showed a picture of Brady and Trump smiling together, of Brady and his “Make America Great Again” hat and quoted him saying “That would be great” when someone asked him about prospects for a Trump presidency.
My friend, who is vehemently opposed to everything Trump, said he wouldn’t believe what I said until he had evidence, thereby perpetuating the nasty habit of people emotionally clinging to falsehoods even when confronted with strong evidence to the contrary.
My friend is not isolated.
I was “unfriended” once on Faceb
ook when I flatly asserted there is no evidence that Jesus Christ was born on Dec. 25.
I’ve faced a lot of vitriol when I’ve told devout Christians who believe the United States is a godly nation that there is absolutely no mention of God in the U.S. Constitution.
I was never invited back to substitute teaching in a Wayland High School social studies class after I had the temerity to tell a student he was wrong when he declared Barack Obama to be the AntiChrist and a Muslim.
I was marginalized in a church when a pastor asked the congregation who in the room had not checked their horoscope at least once in the past year. I was the only one to raise a hand, causing the pastor to remark, “Yes, David, but you’re weird.”
I made a lot of waves as a substitute teacher when I asked students how many Iraqis were among the 19 nuts who crashed two planes into the Twin Towers in New York. No one correctly answered “none.” I was regarded as a troublemaker — for telling the truth.
Too often in my checkered career as a community journalist, I have faced derision, marginalization and anger when I have told unpleasant and unpopular truths.
Some might respond by taunting, “Stop whining. You want a medal or a chest to pin it on?”
So there is more than a grain of truth in that famous scene in “A Few Good Men,” when Jack Nicholson angrily says, “You can’t handle the truth!”
